Carl Hiassen - Sick Puppy

dispatcher: 'Boo-gozer'? Sir, I'm sorry, but you'll have to speak more clearly. This is Levy County Fire Rescue, do you have an emergency to report?

caller: Yeah! Hep! Mah baggh is boge! Ah bing zzhaa eng mah fay! I ngee hep!

dispatcher: Sir, do you speak English?

caller: Eh izzh Engizh! Mah ung gaw zzha off! Whif ah gung!

dispatcher: Hang on, Mr. Boogozer, I'm transferring you to someone who can take the information ...

caller: Ngooohh! Hep! Peezh!

dispatcher two: Diga. Donde estas ?

caller: Aaaaaagghh!!!

dispatcher two: Tienes un emergencia ?

caller: Oh fugghh. I gaw die.

dispatcher two: Senor, por favor, no entiendo nada que estas diciendo.

caller: Hep! ... Hep!

As a car salesman Dick Artemus encountered plenty of pissed-off folks – furious, frothing, beet-faced customers who believed they'd been gypped, deceived, baited, switched or otherwise butt-fucked. They were brought to Dick Artemus because of his silky demeanor, his indefatigable geniality, his astounding knack for making the most distraught saps feel good about themselves – indeed, about the whole human race! Regardless of how egregiously they'd been screwed over, no customers walked out of Dick Artemus's office angry; they emerged placid, if not radiantly serene. It was a gift, the other car salesmen would marvel. A guy like Dick came along maybe once every fifty years.

As governor of Florida, this preternatural talent for bullshitting had served Dick Artemus exquisitely. Even his most virulent political enemies conceded he was impossible not to like, one-on-one. So how could it be, Dick Artemus wondered abjectly, that Clinton Tyree alone was immune to his personal magnetism? The man did not like him; detested him, in fact. Dick Artemus could draw no other conclusion, given that the ex-governor now held him by the throat, pinned to the wood-paneled wall of the gubernatorial dining room. It had happened so fast – dragged like a rag doll across the table, through the remaining tangy crescent of Key lime pie – that Dick Artemus had not had time to ring for Sean or the bodyguards.

Clinton Tyree's brows twitched and his glass eyeball fluttered, and his grip was so hateful that the governor could not gulp out a word. That's the problem, Dick Artemus lamented. If only this crazy bastard would ease up, maybe I could talk my way out of this mess.

In the tumult Clinton Tyree had lost his shower cap, and his refulgent bullet-headed baldness further enhanced the aura of menace.

Looming inches from the governor's meringue-smudged nose, he said: "I oughta open you up like a mackerel."

It hurt Dick Artemus to blink, his face was so pinched.

"Nothing must happen to disturb my brother. Ever," the ex-governor whispered hoarsely.

Dick Artemus managed a nod, the hinges of his jaw painfully obstructed by the brute's thumb and forefinger.

"What exactly do you believe in, sir?"

"Uh?" peeped Dick Artemus.

"The vision thing. What's yours – tract homes and shopping malls and trailer parks as far as the eye can see? More, more, more? More people, more cars, more roads, more houses." Clinton Tyree's breath was hot on the governor's cheeks. "More, more, more," he said. "More, more, more, more, more, more, more ... "

Dick Artemus felt his feet dangling – the madman was hoisting him one-handed by the neck. A terrified squeak escaped from the governor.

"I didn't fit here, Dick," Clinton Tyree was saying. "But you! This is your place and your time. Selling is what you do best, and every blessed inch of this state is for sale. Same as when I had your job, Dickie, only the stakes are higher now because there's less of the good stuff to divvy up. How many islands are left untouched?"

Clinton Tyree laughed mordantly and let Dick Artemus slide down the wall. He hunched over him like a grave digger. "I know what I ought to do to you," he said. "But that might get my friends in hot water, so instead ... "

And the next thing the governor knew, he had been stripped of his coat, shirt and necktie. He lay bare-chested on the floor, with 240 pounds of one-eyed psychopath kneeling on his spine.

"What the hell're you doing?" he cried, then his head was roughly jerked backward until he could see the pitiless vermilion glow of Clinton Tyree's dead eye.

"Hush now, Governor Dick."

So Dick Artemus shut up and concentrated on bladder control, to preserve his dignity as well as the gubernatorial carpet. If Clinton Tyree did not intend to kill him, then what was he up to? Dick Artemus shivered when he felt his trousers being loosened and yanked down.

He thought: Aw Jesus, it's just like Deliverance.

Involuntarily his anus puckered, and he found himself suddenly ambivalent about the possibility of being rescued mid-sodomy – the headlines might be more excruciating than the crime. The only governor of Florida to be boned by a former governor on the floor of the governor's mansion! There's one for the history books, Dick Artemus thought disconsolately, and more than just a damn footnote.

Even worse than the threat of public humiliation was the potential political fallout. Was Florida ready to reelect a defiled chief executive? Dick Artemus had his doubts. He remembered how the audience felt about the Ned Beatty character at the end of the movie – you were sorry for the guy, but no one was standing in line for his next canoe trip.

A calloused paw grabbed one of the governor's buttocks and he girded for the worst. Then: an unexpected sensation, like a dry twig scratching up and down his flesh, or the lusty play of a woman's fingernails – sharp, yet pleasing. Dick Artemus remained motionless and oddly becalmed. He wondered what the big freak was doing, straddling his cheeks and humming so quietly to himself.

The bizarre proceeding was disrupted when a door opened and a woman shouted Clinton Tyree's name. Dick Artemus twisted his neck and saw Lisa June Peterson and Lt. Jim Tile each fastening themselves to one of the ex-governor's arms, pulling him away – the madman grinning yet submissive – out of the dining room.

Dick Artemus lurched to his feet and tugged up his pants and smoothed his tousled hair. Not a word would be said about this – Lisa June and the trooper could be counted upon for that. No one would ever know! He hurried to the bedroom for a freshly pressed shirt and notified his driver he was ready. And in the car on the way to the Planters Club, Dick Artemus breezily reviewed the notes for his speech, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It was only later, after leaving the dais to a round of polite applause, that Dick Artemus discovered what Clinton Tyree had done to him. The FDLE agent standing outside the men's room heard a sob and flung open the door to see the governor of Florida with blood-flecked boxer shorts bunched at his ankles, his milk-white bum thrust toward the mirror. He was appraising himself woefully over one shoulder.

"Sir?" the agent said.

"Go away!" croaked Dick Artemus. "Out!"

But the agent already had seen it. And he could read it, too, even backward in the mirror:

The wordshame in scabbing pink letters across the governor's bare ass, where it had been meticulously etched with a buzzard beak.

Jim Tile said, "This time you've outdone yourself."

"Jail?" Skink asked.

"Or the nuthouse."

Lisa June Peterson said, "Are you kidding? Nobody's going to jail. This never happened."

They were heading to the hospital in Jim Tile's patrol car. The trooper and Lisa June sat up front. McGuinn and the ex-governor were curled in two aromatic heaps – one black and one fluorescent orange – on the backseat, in the prisoner cage.